Why Should You Become an IT Consultant

You’ve been thinking of jumping out of the corporate race for a while now but haven’t been able to.

Then a client approached you and signed you on for a project that he felt needed your expertise. He asked you to act as an IT consultant. It was a great gig and the added income only made it sweeter. Now you’re thinking to become a full-time consultant and be your own boss. But you’re not sure if you should quit your job yet. Here’s the little nudge you will need to go through with the move:

1. Corporate race

You will be out of the corporate race forever. No more petty fights for promotions and salary hikes. No more crazy work hours and long nights. You will breakout of the golden cage and fly freely.

2. Professional Growth

At work, you have to do all kinds of projects, irrespective of your interest level in doing them. But when you become an IT consultant, you can chose a niche area and become an expert, for example – Service-Oriented Architecture on the Microsoft platform; or Cloud Migration.

3. Worklife Balance

When you’re done with your day’s work, it means you’re done for real. No one will ring you up at odd hours asking for this program code or that, or ask you to log in real quick and spend a moment on a client report. You can work when you want. You decide your work hours. You will be finally able to take that holiday you’ve always wanted to.

4. Added income

If you’re still not sure of becoming a full time consultant, you can continue to do it part time to gauge your success rate. See this as an added income stream. You can also use this time to network and get more business, to make sure you have enough projects to be on your own.

5. Work from home

Being a consultant will enable you to work from home, which is great. You can dedicate one room or a little space as your office area where you go to work. You can even dress up for work like you usually do to create an atmosphere of professionalism, or if clothes don’t really affect your performance, you can even work in your pyjamas.

6. Freedom

As a consultant you get the freedom to say no to work that you don’t like. And it feels good. No one can force you to do work that is not your cup of tea.

7. You’re the boss

The great part of being a consultant is that you get to fix your own consulting fee. You decide how much you want to earn, not others.

8. Meeting people

If you’re consulting for a lot of companies, it will mean you will come across a lot of people, unlike at work where you keep seeing the same folks over and over again.

9. Multi-hats

As a consultant you will get to don many hats as you will be looking after all aspects of business management, including, finance, project management, client management etc.

Becoming a consultant might not be everyone’s thing. It calls for experience and ability for multi-tasking. You will have to network tirelessly and be your own proponent. You will need to constantly jump from project to project, picking up all the new information rapidly. But it gives you two extremely important aspects of your life back: independence and freedom. Once you become a consultant, it’s hard to think of a 9-5 job (or longer) again. If you’re still unsure of becoming one, stop worrying and go for it.